by Mikal J. Harris

Sarah Blackstone, Theater Department chairwoman, has been trying to get all of her department’s offices connected to the Internet for eight years.

She cannot access the department’s homepage or e-mail her students and colleagues from her office.

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She is unable to access information on the Web from her office to use in her theater history classes.

Her business manager is unable to access financial screens the University provides for other campus offices. When a vendor wants to know if a check would be in the mail, Blackstone said it takes the business manager about 45 minutes to answer.

Blackstone sought the help of the University and many others on campus in solving her dilemma, as she was determined to get Internet access for her department.

I did a lot of whining at a lot of meetings, she said. There are a lot of people who wouldn’t use the word e-mail around me because they knew I would cringe.

But by July, that problem may be a thing of the past. Blackstone is optimistic that all Theater Department offices will be connected to the Internet by July 1, after the culmination of extensive research and work finally done on her department’s behalf.

Unlike Theater Department offices on the second floor of the Communications Building, first-floor offices such as Blackstone’s were without the wire closets necessary to facilitate Internet connections.

Once those wire closets were put in, office phone equipment was not up to speed. New tubing for phone wires would cost $7,000.

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Blackstone said her department with the aid of McLeod Theater Box Office funds came up with about 50 percent of the cost, and John Jackson, vice chancellor for Academic Affairs and provost, allocated funding for the rest.

Because the Theater Department is located in such a media-oriented building, Jackson was awed by the complexity of finally giving the department access to technology many take for granted. He is pleased with the July 1 expectation for operational Internet access.

It’s ironic that the Communications Building is a building that has been isolated from the newest technologies, he said. It makes no sense for that building not to be adequately connected to the Internet. Overcoming that obstacle has been a headache.

Blackstone, who said there were no computers in the Theater Department offices when she first arrived at SIUC, said she knows the hardships of equipping University departments with the latest technologies. Those efforts can be very difficult.

Everybody knows what needs to be done, she said The question is where are all the big bucks coming from? It cost $7,000 for my department to finally get connected. What would it cost the whole University? I think this is a problem people are struggling with all over campus. The idea of technology can be frustrating.

But while technology can be frustrating, that frustration is worthwhile, she said.

I fully believe that we cannot prepare students for the 21st century if we don’t know how, she said. I know students are very concerned as I am. They know you have to be computer literate in this world, or else you can hang it up.

Blackstone said the biggest challenge she faced in making her idea a reality was finding the right people to talk to. One of the people she contacted was Al Allen, director of Information Technology.

Allen said helping Blackstone became a prominent concern for him and his staff, as she had been waiting for Internet connections for eight years.

We hope we helped get her connection project back on track, he said. The situation with the network over there has been very frustrating for her. Anything we can do to help her reach her network goals is long overdue.

She’s been more than patient over the last couple of years. It would have been better if we could have helped her far sooner.